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400-408 – Stephen Schwartz, Director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism (islamicpluralism.org), and author of The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Saud From Tradition to Terror, and his latest The Other Islam: Sufism and the Road to Global Harmony.

413-423 – Stephen Schwartz

428-437 – Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (aifdemocracy.org), an organization "committed to demonstrating the synergy of American democracy and its founding principles with the religion of Islam," is a former Navy Lieutenant Commander in the Medical Corps now in private practice in Phoenix.

558-608 – Matt McCormick, CEO of the Christian Lawyers of America (christianlawyersofamerica.com, 888-702-0111).The next Christian Financial Restoration Workshop will be next Friday at 7pm and all day Saturday (March 27-28) at the Queen Mary in Long Beach.Everything is free including parking.

"Holy Father among the many evils that affect Africa there is also the particular problem of the spread of AIDS. The position of the Catholic Church for fighting this evil is frequently considered unrealistic and ineffective.

"Will you address this issue during your trip? Holy Father, could you please respond in French to this question?" he asked.

Although the Pope responded to a previous question from the French newspaper La Croix in French, he gave this in-depth answer in Italian.

"I would say the opposite."

"It is my belief that the most effective presence on the front in the battle against HIV/AIDS is precisely the Catholic Church and her institutions. I think of the Community of Sant' Egidio, which does so much, visibly and invisibly to fight AIDS, of the Camillians, of all the nuns that are at the service of the sick.

"I would say that this problem of AIDS cannot be overcome with advertising slogans. If the soul is lacking, if Africans do not help one another, the scourge cannot be resolved by distributing condoms; quite the contrary, we risk worsening the problem. The solution can only come through a twofold commitment: firstly, the humanization of sexuality, in other words a spiritual and human renewal bringing a new way of behaving towards one another; and secondly, true friendship, above all with those who are suffering, a readiness - even through personal sacrifice - to be present with those who suffer. And these are the factors that help and bring visible progress.

"Therefore, I would say that our double effort is to renew the human person internally, to give spiritual and human strength to a way of behaving that is just towards our own body and the other person's body; and this capacity of suffering with those who suffer, to remain present in trying situations.

"I believe that this is the first response [to AIDS] and that this is what the Church does, and thus, she offers a great and important contribution. And we are grateful to those that do this."

'We have found no consistent associations between condom use and lower HIV-infection rates, which, 25 years into the pandemic, we should be seeing if this intervention was working."So notes Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, in response to papal press comments en route to Africa this week.

// "The pope is correct," Green told National Review Online Wednesday, "or put it a better way, the best evidence we have supports the pope's comments. He stresses that "condoms have been proven to not be effective at the 'level of population.'"

"There is," Green adds, "a consistent association shown by our best studies, including the U.S.-funded 'Demographic Health Surveys,' between greater availability and use of condoms and higher (not lower) HIV-infection rates. This may be due in part to a phenomenon known as risk compensation, meaning that when one uses a risk-reduction 'technology' such as condoms, one often loses the benefit (reduction in risk) by 'compensating' or taking greater chances than one would take without the risk-reduction technology."

Green added: "I also noticed that the pope said 'monogamy' was the best single answer to African AIDS, rather than 'abstinence.' The best and latest empirical evidence indeed shows that reduction in multiple and concurrent sexual partners is the most important single behavior change associated with reduction in HIV-infection rates (the other major factor is male circumcision)."

Limit the number of partners, because studies have also shown that the greatest risk is in multiple partners.

Offer needle exchange. Studies have shown that in some places clean needles can slow down the transmission of HIV.

Wait for sexual debut. Studies have shown that the younger a person is at their his or her sexual encounter, the more likely it is that he or she will be infected with HIV. So if you can encourage people to wait until they're older, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, before they have their first sexual encounter you can slow down the spread of HIV.

To STOP HIV/AIDS

Save sex for marriage.

Teach men and boys to respect and honor women and girls. If men continue to treat women with such disrespect, HIV will be on our planet for a long time to come. So there's a discipleship element.

Offer treatment through churches. We think that those things that I told you about, those six things that churches can do, when the church is involved, it can stop the spread of AIDS.